Chrysippus on Free Will and Responsibility

While reading this morning, I came across a passage in my book that I think relates well to our discussion on fatalism earlier this semester and also to the topic for tomorrow night: free will and addiction, and the ethical responsibilities for self-harming actions. The author starts by detailing the beliefs of the Stoics concerning the free will, or for them, the lack of it, possessed by human beings – except for the sage, but that’s a different topic. As the author puts it, for the Stoics, events of nature and human events are “parts of the universal casual nexus which is fate, providence or God, and so…predetermined.” Their critics attacked this viewpoint by claiming that if everything were predetermined, there would be no responsibility or good deeds able to be praised or bad deeds to be condemned, just as we were conjecturing about the existence of morality in a fatalistic world in one of our prior club meetings. Yet Chrysippus, one of the most eminent of the Stoics, argued for the compatibility of fatalism and responsibility in 2 ways. First, even if our actions are really predetermined reactions to external influences or impressions, they are still our own reactions. Chrysippus writes:

“Although it is the case that all things are constrained and bound together by fate through a certain necessary and primary principle, yet the way in which the natures of our minds themselves are subject to fate depends on their own individual quality. For if they have been fashioned through nature originally in a healthy and expedient way, they pass on all that force, which assails them from outside through fate, in a more placid and pliant manner. If, however, they are harsh and ignorant and uncultured, and if they are pressed on by little or no necessity from an impulse they hurl themselves into constant crimes and error. And that this very thing should come about in this way is a result of that natural and necessary sequence which is called fate. For it is, as it were, fated and a consequence of their type itself, that bad natures should not lack crimes and errors. It is just as if you throw a cylindrical stone across a region of ground which is sloping and steep; you were the cause and beginning of headlong fall for it, but soon it rolls headlong, not because you are now bringing that about, but because that is how its fashion and the capacity for rolling in its shape are. Just so the rule and principle and necessity of fate sets kinds and beginnings of causes in motion, but the impulses of our minds and deliberations, and our actions themselves, are governed by each person’s own will and by the natures of our minds.” (Gellius, Attic Nights 7.2.7-11 = LS 62D)

So, we may wonder, if it is our developed natures, which have been predetermined before our birth, (that is the reason for our throwing the stone from the hill) which cause our reaction to outside influences, and the reaction is ours (we do the throwing) – can it still be our responsibility for the event or its outcome? If we blame what we have been predisposed to, our natures that have been given to us, but it is still we who (must) react in a certain way, how much responsibility is ours? For Monday’s talk, is an addiction, presumably something of nature, our responsibility or only reactions to external forces?

The second part of Chrysippus’ argument for responsibility and fatalism is that our actions (or reactions) do make a difference, even though predetermined. The author explains: “To say that certain things are fated to happen does not mean that they are fated to happen regardless of what anyone does beforehand, but rather that certain outcomes and the actions which are necessary to bring them about are ‘co-fated’ with one another.”

This seems quite the paradox, then. It may be clarified as the author shows if we think about an example from the Greek tragedy Oedipus. It would be complete nonsense to say that Oedipus’ father would have had a child whether he slept with a woman or not. Yet he chose to take that risk even after being warned by the oracle that his son would kill him. He wouldn’t have chosen otherwise, but it was still his choice; it is his responsibility, even if the action (or reaction) was predetermined.

What do we think of this argument? Coherent and conclusive? Confusing and lacking?